how can we be the second highest shot created

[Never to the dark side]

and be where we are?

Thankfully we have had Tammy,but precision from others seems to be the problem

http://www.footcharts.co.uk/index.cfm?task=basics_shots

[reformed_red]

IT MAKES SENSE NOW.

Pemberton was on shooting practice duty. Stats don't lie.

Good call Little Lee.

[BRISTOL86]

The problem is at the other end of the pitch and has been for two seasons now. And even in L1 before Cotts, same issue. 

[headhunter]

That's an increase of 25% compared with last season [14.95 vs 11.98 shots per game]

Our promotion year saw 12.46 and relegation under O'Driscoll in 2012/13 was 9.57 - now when people talk about how *hit we are this season it was so much worse in 2013!!!

[1960maaan]

That's shots AT target not shots ON target ........  cow's bum with a banjo springs to mind.
Those shots can be from 40/50 yards so they can be deceptive, and as @BRISTOL86 says , we are well up in the shots against League too.

[Spoons]

16 minutes ago, reformed_red said:

IT MAKES SENSE NOW.

Pemberton was on shooting practice duty. Stats don't lie.

Good call Little Lee.

Pembo was the defensive coach. And our defence ain't very good! No problem with pembo being sacked but LJ and the rest should have gone with him.

[BRISTOL86]

To further illustrate my point, tonight's visitors have scored ONE more goal than us this season. 

[winterbournered]

36 minutes ago, 1960maaan said:

That's shots AT target not shots ON target ........  cow's bum with a banjo springs to mind.
Those shots can be from 40/50 yards so they can be deceptive, and as @BRISTOL86 says , we are well up in the shots against League too.

Very true but if you look at the on target table, we are still 7th! 

Be interested to see what the inside/outside % is. I don't think we've been as bad as people think. Just can't get the defensive side sorted! Seems LJ thinks that's down to Pemberton. Time will tell. 

[Mr Popodopolous]

Arguably a better stat to look at is shots conceded or shots on target conceded.

That shows an underlying defensive soundness- or lack of! (Shots on Target conceded excludes penalties, own goals and woodwork).

[Fiale]

25 minutes ago, BRISTOL86 said:

To further illustrate my point, tonight's visitors have scored ONE more goal than us this season. 

 

yep, we give to many away. I'll just cut and paste the below comparing to our promotion contenders we play tonight.

 

 

We finished above them last season, so it is disappointing. They have had a good season, playing good attractive football in front of large crowds and are going to get a playoff place, and even still might get a automatic slot into Premier League. When SL looks at the 2 clubs he must seriously wonder WTF has gone wrong.

They have lost just 9 league games all season, us 19

They have won 22 league games us 10

Our goals scored are almost identical 47 v 46

But their defence has been solid conceding just 39 goals , us 53

 

If they beat us they are just 4 points behind Brighton and Newcastle, but more tellingly they are the league in form team.....

Their team is valued the same as ours £20.57 million compared to us £21 million

They have spent £4 million this season - we have spent £11 million (possibly more this season) 

the difference between us and them ?  

 

[Mr Popodopolous]

Even defensively our underlying numbers are not so bad. In the sense of 4.14 shots on target conceded per game. Midtable numbers.

We are certainly conceding more than we should therefore.

[Olé]

This stat has been winding me up for months and I have commented on it before on here. Having only missed a couple of games this season from my own experience I refute we have created lots of clear cut chances except extraordinarily high counts at Rotherham and less so Fulham. 

As I've said before, this stat includes everything and says nothing for quality of the chances - as such I've long since believed our number is pointlessly inflated by months of us building slowly outside the box with only Tammy up front (and well marked) and no wingers, passing it round in midfield before eventually having a speculative low probability shot from from 25 yards (normally blocked or into the stand). We had loads of those.

If you don't remember what I'm referring to, let me set the picture for you: after about a minute of passing it sideways or backwards on the halfway line, Pack eventually 'releases' Freeman with two lines of four opponents ahead of him and only Tammy to aim for. Give or take 30 more seconds of passing around in front of their defence, one of them (normally Freeman) gives up and just hammers the ball at the crowd of defenders he can't get past.

And bingo, City "chances created" number goes up. 

[1960maaan]

4 minutes ago, winterbournered said:

Very true but if you look at the on target table, we are still 7th! 

Be interested to see what the inside/outside % is. I don't think we've been as bad as people think. Just can't get the defensive side sorted! Seems LJ thinks that's down to Pemberton. Time will tell. 

It's a funny one. While I haven't seen too many shockers from individual defenders,we still concede at a rate of knots. No one has shied away from a challenge, or looked to give less that 100% but as a unit we, not only concede , but fold regularly. I wonder if 2 good , regular , FB's would make THAT much of a difference as looking at it quickly, that is the main weak point.
We conceded 12 in the first 12 games,scoring 19, including a sign of things to come at Sheff W. 17 in the last 12,scoring 11 . One thing that does stand out is our ability to score one less than the opposition, who knows why. Our 'good' form at the start of the season, still came while conceding a goal a game on average. Not great. The big difference is holding that one goal advantage, simple to say hard to understand. Specially as we still average scoring about a goal a game but now concede 1.5 and that is a telling stat. over 2 games you score 2 let in 3, that over a season will kill you.  All those hopeful posts of 'we only lose by one so we're not that bad' out of that phrase I pick out two words...... we lose, the score is immaterial .

The shots table , while telling half a story , doesn't give a full picture. Early on this season the stats were even better, most games we were having 20+ shot per game. That would include every shot, from however far, and however poor, but I guess it shows we do get in position. 

[BRISTOL86]

9 minutes ago, Olé said:

This stat has been winding me up for months and I have commented on it before on here. Having only missed a couple of games this season from my own experience I refute we have created lots of clear cut chances except extraordinarily high counts at Rotherham and less so Fulham. 

As I've said before, this stat includes everything and says nothing for quality of the chances - as such I've long since believed our number is pointlessly inflated by months of us building slowly outside the box with only Tammy up front (and well marked) and no wingers, passing it round in midfield before eventually having a speculative low probability shot from from 25 yards (normally blocked or into the stand). We had loads of those.

If you don't remember what I'm referring to, let me set the picture for you: after about a minute of passing it sideways or backwards on the halfway line, Pack eventually 'releases' Freeman with two lines of four opponents ahead of him and only Tammy to aim for. Give or take 30 more seconds of passing around in front of their defence, one of them (normally Freeman) gives up and just hammers the ball at the crowd of defenders he can't get past.

And bingo, City "chances created" number goes up. 

The underlying point is valid though - we've scored one less than the team in 3rd place so I refuse to accept that we do not create enough quality chances to be in a better position.

By orders of magnitude the opposite end of the pitch is the problem - though I'll include the midfield (or lack of) in blame for the number of goals we concede. 

[Mr Popodopolous]

12 minutes ago, Olé said:

This stat has been winding me up for months and I have commented on it before on here. Having only missed a couple of games this season from my own experience I refute we have created lots of clear cut chances except extraordinarily high counts at Rotherham and less so Fulham. 

As I've said before, this stat includes everything and says nothing for quality of the chances - as such I've long since believed our number is pointlessly inflated by months of us building slowly outside the box with only Tammy up front (and well marked) and no wingers, passing it round in midfield before eventually having a speculative low probability shot from from 25 yards (normally blocked or into the stand). We had loads of those.

If you don't remember what I'm referring to, let me set the picture for you: after about a minute of passing it sideways or backwards on the halfway line, Pack eventually 'releases' Freeman with two lines of four opponents ahead of him and only Tammy to aim for. Give or take 30 more seconds of passing around in front of their defence, one of them (normally Freeman) gives up and just hammers the ball at the crowd of defenders he can't get past.

And bingo, City "chances created" number goes up. 

What about chances conceded? Why do we concede more goals than we probably should?

[JoeAman08]

21 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

What about chances conceded? Why do we concede more goals than we probably should?

I think it's as simple as full backs to be honest. Most goals we concede are some form of cross so I guess add set pieces into that as well. We've gotten a bit better because Cotterill helps out some from the right side but we let way too many crosses in. Very rarely have we been beaten by pure quality goals. Think all the Reading goals came from wingers finding a man in the box. Newcastle their goals were from crosses. Derby had a couple scored from crosses. Villa the other week I remember one goal from a decent cross. Only Fulham and Brighton have really played us off the park and Newcastle second half. 

We are more than capable to play with anyone in this league but we give the best players in this league(wingers) too much space. If we had two average championship full backs we'd be mid table easily. Our attack isn't the problem and I hate the arguments about 1 up top of 2 up top. We've had spells with both where we were prolific and where we weren't. Our season has again gone downhill because of an inability to defend and full back has been our Achilles heel all season. I remember early in the season many saw how narrow our fullbacks played. They still do this even though they've shown they aren't able to deal with giving wingers that much space. Teams don't really play through the middle in this league but we set up like they do. 

[Olé]

8 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

What about chances conceded? Why do we concede more goals than we probably should?

IMHO, awful full backs who aren't up the Championship glue-like level of athleticism and marking, and more generally too respectful of opponents in everything we do, specifically tinkering with formation and selection every game rather than setting out to play and enforce our game (does anyone know what 'our game' is?) and instead being compact and deep to contain their game rather than play ours.

I'm a firm believer that if we actually tried to express ourselves for a full 90 minutes we might stop losing the initiative and seeing the ball come back at us over and over. It's a cruel irony that I've spent most of the season moaning about the poor quality of attacking football and chance creation (with a few exceptions), yet we ship loads of goals - shouldn't one benefit from the lower impact of the other?

My personal opinion is LJ achieves the futility of failing at both ends of the pitch because our "attacking" is compact, slow tempo, passing around midfield, with few options, width or pace further forward, so passing back to a central defender (normally Flint) to hoof down the field. Net result are 50-50 balls in attacking positions that we commit few people to, many come back at us, defence eventually breaks.

I can't remember any other City manager who didn't at least manage to stamp some bold attacking football of City's own on matches, particularly at AG, and particularly in the last ten minutes if we weren't already winning. We did manage it at the end of the Norwich game, but prior to that (Burton included) for months we've seen the shell of a team that LJ has made us by how tame we are even on our own patch.

Hopefully that stops tonight. It is our bloody ground and if we're going to stay up lets do so fighting for what we believe in. Huddersfield are a very good team, but there is showing respect and there is being cautious and over complicating things trying to adapt to what they're going to do. Let's just not give them a chance. Be bold and make them worry about WE are going to do. IT WOULD MAKE A CHANGE!!

[BRISTOL86]

13 minutes ago, Olé said:

IMHO, awful full backs who aren't up the Championship glue-like level of athleticism and marking, and more generally too respectful of opponents in everything we do, specifically tinkering with formation and selection every game rather than setting out to play and enforce our game (does anyone know what 'our game' is?) and instead being compact and deep to contain their game rather than play ours.

I'm a firm believer that if we actually tried to express ourselves for a full 90 minutes we might stop losing the initiative and seeing the ball come back at us over and over. It's a cruel irony that I've spent most of the season moaning about the poor quality of attacking football and chance creation (with a few exceptions), yet we ship loads of goals - shouldn't one benefit from the lower impact of the other?

My personal opinion is LJ achieves the futility of failing at both ends of the pitch because our "attacking" is compact, slow tempo, passing around midfield, with few options, width or pace further forward, so passing back to a central defender (normally Flint) to hoof down the field. Net result are 50-50 balls in attacking positions that we commit few people to, many come back at us, defence eventually breaks.

I can't remember any other City manager who didn't at least manage to stamp some bold attacking football of City's own on matches, particularly at AG, and particularly in the last ten minutes if we weren't already winning. We did manage it at the end of the Norwich game, but prior to that (Burton included) for months we've seen the shell of a team that LJ has made us by how tame we are even on our own patch.

Hopefully that stops tonight. It is our bloody ground and if we're going to stay up lets do so fighting for what we believe in. Huddersfield are a very good team, but there is showing respect and there is being cautious and over complicating things trying to adapt to what they're going to do. Let's just not give them a chance. Be bold and make them worry about WE are going to do. IT WOULD MAKE A CHANGE!!

Not enough words to describe how much I like this post. 

Look at first half Norwich (timid, respectful, negative setup) vs second half where we were bold and attacking and played to our strengths (that's NOT defending, Lee) 

If we setup like first half Norwich tonight we will get hammered and humiliated. If we get in their faces and be bold and attack then who knows. 

[Mr Popodopolous]

@Olé @JoeAman08

Agree the full backs don't seem up to it. If we are going to play Bryan best as a wing back or not at all IMO. Vyner is showing good promise, freezing him out for a year after a bad game v Brighton last season was VERY harsh and premature IMO. Matthews...what a disappointment that's all I can say.

What I mean is though we seem unusually fragile- if you look at shots on targets to goals ratio we are more fragile than many. It's like some games opposition have 3 shots and score 3 goals against us, somewhat high.

Would like to see us impose ourselves more on games but vs Huddersfield with their skill in possession and speed on the break I would worry. Unsure of the best approach tonight. Flint and our full backs vs a rapid passing counter attacking...hmm.

http://www.squawka.com/news/huddersfield-town-are-the-toughest-team-newcastle-united-have-faced-in-the-championship-this-season-shelvey/920057

 

Quote

 

When asked who was the best opponent he has faced this season, Shelvey said on Sky Sports’ EFL Weekly podcast: “I wouldn’t pick out an individual, it’s more about the teams we have played and Huddersfield are tough.

“The way they pass the ball, you have just got to stay in the game and then hit them on the counter attack so as a team, probably Huddersfield.”

 

 

 

 

 

When you have even one of Newcastle's star players saying this I wonder about the wisdom of attacking tonight, pressing high. For what it's worth I think we will dig out a hard fought, spirited draw tonight.